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The Request for Proposals to develop a made-in-Canada e-book lending solution for Canadian public libraries, called by the Canadian Urban Libraries Council and eBOUND, has ended without progressing to a pilot.

A statement released by CULC said that the Working Group found that developing a solution was not going to be sustainable under current conditions. In particular, major issues included the terms of sale for content to be used for the pilot, and the cost of developing the system.

The Working Group will review how to further their goals through alternative means. CULC and the Association of Canadian Publishers will continue to collaborate in finding ways to improve the access, promotion and discoverability of Canadian content.

Canada’s public libraries (represented by the Canadian Urban Libraries Council) and Canada’s English-language publishing community (represented by eBound Canada) are planning to develop a made-in-Canada solution that will provide eBook lending capabilities to all Canadian public libraries from Canadian publishers, with the opportunity for international publishers to join in. The solution will also potentially facilitate sales of both eBook and print materials from the same publishers to library patrons. The solution should allow all patron transactions to take place in a library’s existing discovery interface.

Following this, the request for proposals was released in February 2013, and will close on March 11, 2013. It is intended that this will lead to a year-long pilot of a solution, with Hamilton Public Library, Ottawa Public Library, Toronto Public Library and Vancouver Public Library participating as pilot sites. The RFP includes detailed technical and functional requirements for the solution.